Nukes for Iran

[Please also see my subsequent posting: https://sanfranciscoba.wordpress.com/2012/06/05/nuclear-bullsht/]

The atomic bomb was conceived and created 60-something years ago in the minds of men and the high desert of New Mexico.

Almost immediately, the very men who made it had second thoughts. Some tried to talk the president, first Roosevelt, then Truman, out of its deployment, or even disclosure.  It was reported that as nuclear physicist J. Robert Oppenheimer watched the detonation of the first atomic bomb during a test, he recalled words from the Bhagavad Gita: ‘Now, I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds.’

The bomb was, of course, deployed to devastating and horrific result. And, in the contrary nature of humankind, people were both repulsed and irresistibly attracted by the blinding light. The United States had it and everyone else wanted it. We tried our best to hold the secrets safe but, in the end, it was a fool’s errand.

The Soviet Union got it. Others got it too. Science works that way.

The sad truth is, any country on earth able and willing to devote adequate resources can have a nuclear weapon. No president, no political party, no economic sanctions, no alliance of nations, no army can prevent it. That is a stone-cold fact. Pretending otherwise is either (1) whistling past the graveyard or (2) ugly pandering for votes.

We have let the nuclear genie out of the bottle and, armies and sanctions be damned, he will not be returned. The prescient writings have been fulfilled, Dr. Oppenheimer.

‘Now, I am become Death, destroyer of worlds.’